


a yellow kitchen (looks good on you)

by thilesluna



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Found Family, Gen, LET LUP AND BARRY ADOPT ANGUS 2K17, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 02:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11749920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilesluna/pseuds/thilesluna
Summary: Lup probably loves this kid who won't stop asking her questions. Barry loves watching the two of them together.





	a yellow kitchen (looks good on you)

_He’s a sneaky little shit, that’s for sure_ , Lup thinks, ignoring the tingles that go through her spectral form when she feels someone watching her. She knows that if she were to turn around, she’d probably miss the kid peeking out from behind one of the corners of the Bureau’s halls but she still knows he’s there. The question becomes: does he know that _she_ knows?

 

It’s been happening more and more since the not-end of the world. After the battle and after Lucretia’s actually kind of baller show with cutting off the opalescent plane formerly known as the Hunger, Lup began to notice that the boy wonder, Angus McDonald, has been following her. She’s only spoken a handful of words to the kid. Every time she tries, he kind of blushes and mutters something before running away which actually kind of stings.

 

“Do I look that scary?” she’d questioned a few days ago. Taako had said yes but Barry had just rolled his eyes and told her that she looked beautiful no matter what. Fat lot of good either of them were.

 

She decides to ignore it for a little bit longer. It’s not like the kid is hurting anyone.

 

\-------

 

Angus isn’t _afraid_ of Taako’s sister, at least he doesn’t think he is. Intimidated, sure. Fascinated, definitely. But scared? Not really.

 

He’s just kind of…nervous talking to her after experiencing the Voidfishes’ lights and watching her in battle and hearing the stories from the rest of the crew of the Starblaster, Lup is just so _much_.

 

There are so many questions built up in his big, dumb brain that he desperately wants to ask but every time he tries, he ends up blushing like some kid and running away.

 

(The traitorous part of his brain says, _you_ are _a kid, dummy_ but Angus thinks that even though he’s only been alive a little over 11 years, he’s seen enough that maybe the word _kid_ doesn’t apply to him so much any more—which is a terrifying thought. What is he if he’s not a kid and definitely not an adult? What do you call someone who’s between? And he doesn’t mean like a _teenager_ because that’s a whole other thing. He’s got all these grown-up thoughts and experiences and he feels like they’re close to bursting out of his little boy body.)

 

So Angus watches and observes and sometimes follows Lup around to get a better feel for her. It’s good practice for when he wants to go back to being a detective and hopefully if he learns enough about her, he can work up the courage to actually talk to her.

 

\------

 

Taako has always been kind of a dick. He, Magnus, and Merle were well known for having a serious addiction to goofing and teasing and sometimes, the three of them didn’t know where to stop. Lup has always been fond of it, even when it’s directed at her.

 

That being said…

 

When the boys are busting on Angus, she feels something go kind of tight in her belly. Angus is a good kid and he takes the ribbing like the best of them but she thinks that because he’s so smart and because he just _goes_ with it, the boys forget that he’s still _just_ a kid. In fact, she thinks that maybe he lets them get away with a little too much due to the hero worship thing he’s got going on. Lup wonders absently what his life before all this craziness was like if he’s so starved for attention that he takes getting bullied as a sign of affection.

 

(And really, she knows Taako and the boys well enough to know that it _is_ affection but Angus doesn’t and she doesn’t think it’s right that they treat him like they do)

 

There’s a day when Taako takes it one step too far—he always _pushes_ Lup thinks, when things start getting to close and too real—while they’re practicing magic and says something about the final battle and how could Angus make it through if he sucks at magic still. The boy _doesn’t_ is the thing. He’s hella capable in a way that reminds Lup of herself when she was young. More powerful than he realizes. She can see the way Angus’s shoulder hunch just a little. Taako sees it too and is immediately apologetic but she steps in anyway because honestly? She can’t stop herself.

 

“Taako you piece of shit! He’s doing more advanced magic then you were doing when you chucklefucks got back together in Neverwinter!” she says, standing between Angus and her brother. “You turned a fucking table into _ground beef_!” He opens his mouth to argue but she holds up a hand that’s crackling with arcane energy and he snaps it shut. “I know you did because Magnus told me so don’t even try that shit, my dude.” It takes her a second to compose herself but she does and she floats closer to Taako, hopefully out of earshot of Angus. “And you weren’t _there_ , Taako,” she says, deadly serious. “You didn’t see what Angus did on the battlefield. He was _amazing_. Better than he should have been—than he should have _had_ to be. Knock it off.”

 

Taako nods slowly and peers around Lup to look at Angus. “C’mere, pumpkin,” he says, squatting down to open his arms up to the kid who doesn’t hesitate for a second before running into them. He’s whispering into Angus’s hair and Lup floats away then, thinking her job is finished and to give them some space.

 

She’s about halfway down the hall when she hears, “Um, excuse me? Miss Lup?”

 

When she turns, Angus is standing a few feet away, wringing his hands together nervously. She smiles even though she knows he can’t see it. “What’s up, little man?”

 

“I, uh, wanted to say thanks,” he says quickly. “And that I—well, it meant a lot to me that you’d stick up for me like that and that I’m also sorry for avoiding you and gosh, I—would it be okay if I asked you some questions some time?” The last part comes out in a rush and she has to take a second to make sure she heard him correctly.

 

“You wanna ask me some questions?”

 

“Yes, ma’am!” he says excitedly. “I have quite a few about a bunch of things!” He stops then, takes a deep breath and tugs on the hem of his shirt. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

 

Lup laughs. “Sure thing, Angus. I’d be happy to answer whatever I can!” His face lights up and she might be dead but the sight of his beaming smile warms her heart just the same.

 

\------

 

_His wand is in pieces. He’s got half in each hand and he’s staring down at them as the Hunger approach. That’s two wands in half as many days, he thinks ruefully. Taako was going to be so disappointed._

_Angus scrambles to shove the pieces back together as the air around him seems to darken. That’s what happens when so many of the Hunger are in one place. The light just—leaves. Maybe if he holds the pieces just right. Maybe he can still channel a spell through them._

_The Hunger are even closer now and he’s knocked backwards and off his feet. The ground beneath him is hard and unforgiving and for a second, he flashes back to being tossed off a moving train but this isn’t then and there will be no missing teeth or silly adventurers to come and pick him up out of the dust this time._

_A massive shadow presses a foot onto his chest and as much as he struggles, he can’t break free. Angus whips out his tiny crossbow and fires a bolt into the things face but that just seems to make it more angry and it presses down even harder._

_It hurts to breathe._

_He thinks wildly of his grandfather in that moment. Angus is the last McDonald with his grandfather dead and now he’s going to pass on from this plane too. It’s a shame, really._

_He feels something crack in his chest and he_ screams _. He yells for Merle, for Taako, for Magnus, for_ anyone _because it_ hurts _. God, it hurts so much and he’s only 11-years-old and he’s so scared._

 

\------

 

Lup doesn’t need to sleep. Hell, she doesn’t even need to meditate anymore considering the whole _dead_ thing so she spends a lot of time wandering around the moon. Barry needs to sleep, the lucky bastard with his human body and Lup feels like a real, actual ghost when she just _hangs out_ in their room when he does.

 

She learns a lot about the moon base while everyone is sleeping so it’s kind of a cool trade off.

 

Lup knows when Magnus has a rough night because when she floats by the gym, the lights are all on and there’s the steady sound of fists hitting stuff. She knows when Carey and Killian have date night because more often than not, they sneak back to the moon in the early hours of the morning giggling and hanging all over each other, still a little bit tipsy from the bar hopping planet-side. Lup can tell when Merle has been wandering around, up late for whatever reason because of the trail of flowers his soulwood arm leaves behind.

 

Lup likes knowing all these things. Knowing things and seeing them all happen makes her feel more alive and more present.

 

She’s not, however, prepared for the screaming coming from Angus’s room.

 

The nice thing about being a lich is that doors mean jack shit. She hauls ass for the boy detective’s bedroom and finds him thrashing on the bed, his forehead slick with sweat and his chest heaving. She curses not having a body before channeling as much of her energy as she can into reaching out and touching Angus to help him wake up.

 

“Angus, dear,” she says, loud enough to try and pull him from his nightmare. Her hand feels almost solid—almost _real—_ when she reaches out and lays it on his shoulder. He jerks under it, letting out a cut off yell.

 

“ _Please_ ,” he says, still fighting off whatever is in his dream. “Please help me—I can’t—“

 

“ _Angus_ ,” Lup says again, louder this time. She shakes him slightly, still focusing on making her hand dense enough to do it. “You have to wake up! Wake up, please!” His eyes fly open and he’s reaching for her and not for the first time since becoming a lich, Lup _hates_ it. “Angus, it’s me,” she says, flinching when his hand passes right through her. It’s never made sense that a lich can interact with things in the world but can’t touch others the way a normal living being would. She really fucking hates it.

 

Angus draws his arms back to himself and shudders, eyes squeezed shut. “L-Lup?”

 

“Got it in one, little dude.” She hesitates because this is Magnus territory. This is feelings and reassurances and _emotions_ and god knows she’s not equipped for this kind of thing. “Are you okay?”

 

Angus must pick up on the unsure tone in her voice because he smiles even when it falls a little flat and says, “I’m fine, Miss Lup. Just—you know, a bad dream. Nothing I can’t shake.”

 

But he _is_ shaking which is the problem, Lup thinks. She watches him grip the blankets tight in his fists to make the trembling seem less and she takes in the sweat dotting his brown and the way he slouches to one side—the side that was injured during the battle. She decides that maybe lying would be the best option. “Well since you’re up,” she says, implementing the patented Taaco method of problem solving—fake it ‘til you make it. “Think you could use that big ol’ brain of yours to read me something? I’ve been stuck in an umbrella for like a decade and I could use something to get my mind off of it.”

 

Angus blinks at her owlishly, like he has no idea what the hell she’s talking about—which to be fair, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about either. “A book?”

 

“Sure, a book. Or a short story. Hell,” she says, “you could read me the back of a shampoo bottle and I’d be jazzed as hell, dude.” He furrows his eyebrows and kind of shakes his head as he puts on his glasses.

 

“Are you sure?” he asks, and damn, why is this kid always so anxious about people wanted to spend time with him? Every time anyone suggests it he gets all nervous and makes it seem like hanging out with him would be the worst thing ever (she has a bone to pick with her idiot brother and her idiot friends on that front, to be honest).

 

Lup sighs and shrugs her shoulders. “I mean if you don’t _want_ to, I guess I could go wake Barry up—“

 

“No!” he says quickly. “No, don’t do that! I just—I’m not sure I have any books you would like?”

 

“Well what’s your favorite?” she asks. She knows his favorite. She’d heard all about it when she was in the umbrella and she’s seen him with a collection of those kid cop books in different places all over the moon base. Lup is very careful in making sure no one else knows that she’s been watching and listening.

 

Angus eyes her suspiciously but soon rolls over to his bedside table and plucks a worn book from the top drawer. “It sounds stupid,” he says, fingers tracing over the front cover. “But I really like mystery novels. They’re what made me want to be a detective in the first place and that’s how I ended up here so…”

 

“What’s that one about?” she asks and Angus smiles at the book in his hands.

 

“This one?” He lifts it up and shows her the front. He’s got a glint in his eye and the second she sees the illustration she understands, her own lips pulling into a smile too. “This one is about a murder on a train.”

 

\-------

 

Angus has always asked too many questions. His whole life, he’s been told _Stop being so nosey_ and _Could you give it a_ rest _McDonald?_ by more people than he can count. Even Taako sometimes gets tired of him asking things and sometimes he snaps a little which reminds Angus to back off.

 

The thing about Lup is…she _doesn’t_. She never tells him to stop asking questions. She’s never short with him or snappy and always gives him an answer even if it’s one he doesn’t particularly or even understand.

 

He’s trailing behind her as they walk through the long halls of the moon base and he’s got his notebook out. Angus feels like he’s talking a mile a minute but Lup’s never once asked him to slow down so he doesn’t. “But _how_ does the umbrastaff work—or I mean, how did it work? I know it’s gone now! I remember that! How do you make a thing that can _eat_ magical items? How does it know that you defeated a magic user? What was it like inside of—“ he stops suddenly, both asking the questions and following her, slapping a hand over his mouth. He’s mortified. “Oh my gosh. I shouldn’t—I’m sorry, I didn’t even think and that’s probably not—“ Angus is panicking. He doesn’t want to drive her away or anything because he _loves_ talking with Lup and hearing her stories and now he’s pushed too far again and—

 

Lup leans down and rests a hand on his shoulder. He can feel the energy pulse from it and it calms him. “Don’t sweat it, kid,” she says seriously. “It wasn’t—“ she stops, seems to be thinking about what she wants to say. “It wasn’t the _best_ circumstance to be in but it wasn’t the worst. I could have been dead for real or something but I wasn’t. And Taako found me.” Lup shrugs but Angus can hear the affection in her voice when she goes on. “He found me and I got to be with him even if he didn’t know it. I got to protect him and the rest of those idiots and we all made it through. That’s what counts, you know?”

 

He nods and gives her a shy smile. “You know,” he says, “if I bother you too much you can always tell me to leave you alone. Taako does it all the time and Merle and Magnus.” Angus looks down at his scuffed up, fancy boy shoes. He’ll need new ones soon, he thinks. “I ask a lot of questions and I know I can be annoying. I just—“ he looks up at her then, his smile growing wide. “I just like spending time with you is all and you’re so _cool_.”

 

She huffs out a laugh and then leans in with a hand next to where her mouth would be if she had one. “Cooler than _Taako_?” she mock-whispers, the tone in her voice conspiratorial as all hell.

 

Angus leans in a little bit too and cups his hand over his mouth. “Totally,” he says, grinning.

 

Lup floats back and lets out a long, loud laugh. “You’re a good kid, Angus. I can see why they kept you around.” She turns to head down the hall, stopping at the corner when she sees he’s still where she left him. “Coming, pumpkin?”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” Angus says, and scrambles to catch up.

 

\-------

 

Barry is a man of science. He takes data and fact and turns it into something quantifiable and orderly. Ever since he was little, his brain has always worked that way. Well, _had_.

 

Everything changed when he met Lup.

 

Nothing about her is orderly or exact or even quantifiable. She’s a constant source of discovery and delight for Barry, always changing, always _different_. He’s known her for over a hundred years and yeah, she scared the ever-living hell out of him for the beginning of that, but somehow it evolved and grew and now he knows that living without her would be infinitely more terrifying.

 

 _The weight of a love that defined and redeemed you_ ; that’s what he said to himself in the coin. His love for Lup is exactly that. It grounds him, weighs him down and _changed_ who he was. He honestly thought after the hundred years and the reunion and the saving the world, that there wasn’t much else she could do to make him love her more.

 

And then, Angus happened.

 

Barry’s not sure when it started but he notices the kid starting to follow Lup around and more than that, he notices how much she _likes_ him.

 

There’s no way in hell Lup Taaco would allow a kid to follow her around and ask her question after question if she didn’t want him to. Barry has seen it in action a few times on a few worlds. Watching Lup with Angus is _different_ , another unknown variable that Barry has to take into account so he can change his entire thesis.

 

He finds himself watching them from afar. He claims it’s a scientific interest but Taako pokes his cheek and tells him that he’s got gross emotions written all over his dumb face. “Take a picture, _Barold_. It’ll last longer,” he says laughing and Barry just blushes and bats his hand away.

 

See the thing is, Barry’s not an idiot. He knows that there’s no way that _any_ of them will ever have a normal life ever again. Even with the end of the Hunger and the end of their journey, the things that have happened to all of them make it nearly impossible to just be _normal_. He’s still not used to going down to the planet from the moon base and having complete strangers know exactly who he is. He can’t fathom the fact that the seven of them are basically _famous_ to all 12 planes of existence thanks to the Fisher and it’s baby.

 

Barry knows all of that and yet—

 

There are days when he stares at Lup’s slowly reforming body (blood and hair borrowed from Taako and transitioning spells already on the back burner for when she takes it over) and thinks _we’re almost done_. With Lup in a body and the world saved they could potentially just… _live_. No more running, no more adventures, just _them_ in a house with a stupid picket fence and a garden.

 

(These were things whispered into Barry’s hair late at night on the Starblaster. They were things that Lup had never had, hadn’t even really thought about wanting until their home was lost forever.)

 

Barry thinks about that more than he probably should. It was one of the things that kept him grounded at the beginning of his time as a lich. He’s planned out the house, picked which vegetables he wanted to grow, and pictured Lup standing in a pale yellow kitchen, the light from the window shining on her as he grinned at him over a mug of coffee. It’s been the same for years and years, since the year on the conservatory to be exact. Barry watches Angus practice Produce Flame with Lup hovering over his shoulder. He hears her make a delighted sound when the boy flicks the tiny thing at Merle and it catches his soulwood arm just a _little_ bit on fire.

 

He thinks, as he grins into his breakfast, Angus would look really good surrounded by yellow.

**Author's Note:**

> BA DA DA DA DAHHH i'm lovin' Lup and Barry and Ango bein' a good good family
> 
> find me on tumblr @geargieee


End file.
